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"As eloquently stated in The Rensselaer Plan 2024, the university's strategic plan that leads us to our 200th in 2024, "the most significant transformation at Rensselaer over the past decade has been the creation of a research portfolio of a size, significance, quality, and prominence that positions us to impact Global Challenges." Indeed, over the past 12 years, Rensselaer has solidified its place among the important technological universities of the 21st century..." more

Research in Media, Arts, Science, and Technology facilitates new approaches to networking, advanced visualization, sensor design, haptics, and multiscale modeling and simulation, which are supported by the core capabilities of EMPAC.

Enabled by the capabilities of the CCI, Rensselaer has developed important programs in Computational Science and Engineering focused on high performance computing, big data, and data analytics, which supports research and innovation across a broad front.

Our excellence in Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials builds from the fundamental understanding—experimental, theoretical, and computational - of the underlying atomic and molecular properties of a wide range of nanostructured materials. We now are developing robust, affordable, and sustainable methods for manufacturing new functional hybrid materials, and the hierarchical systems and products based upon them.

A team of researchers, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor Yuri Lvov, has found an elegant explanation for the long-standing Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) problem, first proposed in 1953, investigated with one of the world's first digital computers, and now considered the foundation of experimental mathematics.

"One of the breakthrough technologies we're seeing in robotics is an increasing ability for robots to be trained, rather than programmed, by humans thanks to new sensor- and machine-learning technology," Hendler pointed out.

When you think of our Milky Way Galaxy, you might imagine a smooth disk with spiral arms embedded in it, like swirls in a peppermint. But a second look at observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) suggests that our galaxy’s disk is actually corrugated.

"Impact is a primary focus for RDA," said Fran Berman, chair of RDA/U.S. "In only two years, RDA has begun fulfilling its mission to build the social and technical bridges that enable the open sharing of data."

A ring-like filament of stars wrapping around the Milky Way may actually belong to the galaxy itself, rippling above and below the relatively flat galactic plane. If so, that would expand the size of the known galaxy by 50 percent and raise intriguing questions about what caused the waves of stars.

K.V. Lakshmi, an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Solar Energy is leading a team of 14 scientists working to unlock the secret of how plants use sunlight to split water molecules and release electricity.

Technology and art have always been intertwined. ... At the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC for short) on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Insittute (RPI) campus, scientists and artists are collaborating, in the state-of-the-art facility, to address some of these interfaces in a direct and sconscious way.

Professor Robert Karlicek described methods for integrating “non-invasive” sensors into lighting systems to produce light optimized for a given activity — hands-free because the sensor’s system autonomously categorizes the human activity.

Researchers have pried open some information on how Asian clams move around Lake George.

At the December Lake George Park Commission meeting, the Darrin Fresh Water Institute’s Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer and Jeremy Farrell reported findings from their research on the aquatic invasive species first spotted by Farrell in August 2010 off Lake Avenue Beach in the village.

... in Bolton Landing, Rick Relyea sat in comfortable new conference room at RPI's Darrin Freshwater Institute, using a massive video screen to demonstrate what is called the "data visualization laboratory."

Here is where lake, stream and weather data drawn from a network of up to 40 sensors, once crunched in massive computers, will be turned into graphic displays to explain how the 32-mile lake behaves and how it might change if some troubling trends continue. Surface sensors are connected to the lab via cellphone signal.